Robert Fatton, Jr.

Interviewee: Robert Fatton, Jr., Julia A. Cooper Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia

Interviewer(s): Deborah E. McDowell; James Perla

Interview date: 2018-06-15

Interview Summary: This interview with Robert Fatton Jr.,the Julia A. Cooper Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, delves into Jefferson’s controversial view on the country of Haiti. Fatton discusses the relationship between Haiti and the U.S. since the Haitian Revolution and the ways in which Jefferson’s language describing Haiti as a “republic of cannibals” has reemerged in the present discourse.

Deborah McDowell: Yeah, you know I’m just thinking about… my mind is roving over a whole range of things. I haven’t yet seen the new Exhibition at Monticello.

Robert Fatton, Jr.: Oh!

DM: That’s supposedly devoted to Sally Hemings.

RF: That’s interesting.

DM: Yes, and oh, yes I want to see it in different lights. I want to see it. As a private person, I want to see it in with a group of friends, and then I wantto take a group of students there because it is all based on the imagination. Oran imaginary Sally Hemings because there, you know, maybe there was onephotograph maybe and that photograph bore a strong resemblance to MarthaWashington because they were half sisters but it’s an exhibition that isimagining a Sally Hemings down to her space in the big house, as it were. And sowe, it makes me think that here we are now, for however long we will be I don’tknow, at a moment where at least Monticello, which is the caretaker of, in partof, Jefferson’s memory, his legacy, especially as an icon. That that narrativeseems to be changing. That people seem to be open to changing the narrativeabout Thomas Jefferson if only by acknowledging that Sally Hemings existed. She existed as someone in possibly a long-term relationship with him and someone ina relationship with him that resulted in the birth of children and yet it allhas to be imagined and there is an element of speculation about everything,right? That we don’t know this is where we think she slept, right? And allof that. So thinking about the absence of the kind of iconic figure, the face ofwhich is beaming from every poster, billboard, or lunch counter, if you will.That that’s absent in Cuba but still is very much alive here. So this is not somuch a question but a kind of long-winded preamble to try to have us justinto it. But what I found interesting is that there are two interpretationswarring not violently with each other even with this new Jefferson that we’retrying to imagine. Because in the New York Times’s review of the exhibition,the young people who are responsible for setting up the exhibition, who want toinvoke the issue of rape basically want to say on the museum or the exhibitionplacards, âJefferson raped Sally Hemings.â And yet there are otherhistorians now retired from Monticello who are obviously taking umbrage, butthey don’t want to say that in so many words. So, someone for example likeCinder Stanton says âWell, how do you talk about a person raping anotherperson for thirty plus years?â That that’s unimaginable. We don’t think ofthat as rape. If there are sexual relations between people over the span ofthirty-five years, we aren’t inclined to view that as right. And so all ofthat is a long way into saying that these narratives die hard even when peoplethink that they are open to rethinking them.

Sally Hemings Exhibition

RF: Yeah.

DM: The iconic figure of Jefferson dies hard. Not only that, and I must say myself is not a person who was not worshipping at the shrine of Jefferson, I tookind of bristle at the thought that Jefferson is being represented as havingraped Sally Hemings and it all got me thinking about the extreme interpretations that all of us have been, in a way, in the grip of for quite a while. That thereis [5:00] not much room for nuance. Either he raped her or he didn’t.

RF: The thing though is that because of the racism, extreme racism of the period because of slavery, whatever Jefferson did to slave could not be rape because itwas a thing. So, the idea even if he did in fact rape her, in his eyes, it’s notrape because it’s a thing that is out there, it’s an object, it’s not a full human being. And when you read Jefferson’s writings about the sexualdesires of black men and black women it is absolutely horrific. In The Notes onVirginia, I mean when he talks about, you know, the orangutan, it’s really, it’sterrorizing for someone who is not white and not a slave owner because that’s the way he sees it. So in his eyes, whatever he did to any slave couldn’t beseen as some sort of relation between two different human beings because one wasnot quite a human being.

DM: Yeah two different orders of species, right?

RF: And Jefferson went back and forth because he does say at some points that maybe they are inferior. But other points he doesn’t seem to say so. He wasconflicted about whether there was a real biological difference that wouldessentially say that one race was completely superior over the other. At otherpoints he does seem to say so and that’s very clear.

DM: And he equivocates. He constantly equivocates.

RF: Yeah, absolutely. And at that period, Jefferson was probably one of the most reactionary individuals who had read about the Enlightenment among whites. Youknow, there are plenty of whites who were abolitionists and his relation withHaiti it’s very clear that he comes, well, he called, you know, the Haitians therepublic of cannibals. So that is the way he saw it. But on the other hand, atcertain moments because of geopolitical and economic interest he would curb hisracism because you wanted to weaken, on the one hand, the French which meantthat you could, you know, in a very duplicitous way allow American merchants togive weapons to the Haitian Revolution, the slave revolutionaries, and you couldcontinue commerce that was good for the merchant and the bankers of the UnitedStates, but on the other hand you would tell the French, â”No we are withyou and we are going to starve Toussaint.” So for a while the US’smerchant relationship, economic relationship with Haiti and it probably would have continued if Adams that stayed in power. But once the revolution is over,once Haiti becomes independent, then there’s a complete change of policy. It isan embargo, he doesn’t want to have anything to do to Haiti, Haitians, theHaitian leader at the time, Dessalines, sent him a letter telling him âI’mnot going to do anything in terms of exporting my revolution, but we need tohave relations and he never answers.

DM: So everything for Jefferson is expedient from your description. Everything is expedient.

RF: Well, yes, and no. Because there is the issue of race, which is always in the background because when he’s talking about Haiti under Toussaint which waskind of an autonomous state not yet independent, this is also the potential togive independence to Haiti so Haiti could be a colony for black people. Sendthem there. But he says at the same time it has to be contained. And he says,when he uses the word, the pest has to be contained on the island. So that’skind of a colony for black people, to export black people from the UnitedStates. So he has at one moment the idea the independence might not be such abad thing provided on the other hand that Haitians would not have a navy andwould not have any weapons. So he wanted a completely pacified island for itscolonial purposes.

DM: I’m really interested in the last few minutes you’ve made reference to Jefferson’s description of Haiti as a republic of cannibals and thenHaitian people are pests. This language of, you’re right, it’s not, it does notplace Haitian citizens in the realm of humanity, right?

RF: But on the other hand, he looked at Toussaint as somewhat, what weird guy, you know? He’s defying some of the things I’m thinking about blackpeople but he’s still

DM: He’s still a pest.

RF: Yeah, he’s still a pest. And he looks also at Haiti and it’s not just Jefferson. Madison says the same thing that they needed a despot at thehead of Haiti because that’s the only way you can contain people who were slaveswho’ve become free. There is a vision that if you give freedom to theslaves, that is going to be horrific because they are going to kill, kill, andkill. So, there is that vision. Now, I’ve just read an article, which is kind ofpeculiar article, saying that Jefferson when he talked about Haiti as the republic of cannibals, he was not really referring to Haitians per se, he wasreferring to the Jacobins. The French Jacobin. But that is kind of a weirdthing. A lot of the American leaders at the time taught that the FrenchRevolution went too far in terms of the killings under Robespierre. But, I readthe letter that where he uses Haiti as the republic of cannibals, a letter toAaron Burr, and I don’t see how you can explain that expression without lookingat the direct connection to Haiti. But there is that thing that in fact he may have also wanted to talk about the Jacobins. But we know that Jefferson was aFrancophile and he was more sympathetic to the revolution than Adams, I meanthey were really terrified about the excesses of the revolution. So I think thatthat description is still the one that should hold. That he sees that and whenhe talks about the pests contained, that’s also about Haiti. So, and he wants toembargo and he wants to quarantine the island if it gets independent and when itgot its independence, that’s exactly what he did.

James Perla: So the comment about that a despot should rule over Haiti, that comes after independence?

RF: That comes before and after. That if there is to be independence, in any case it’s going to be a despot because that’s the only way those people canbe ruled. They are not yet ready for our kind of democracy, as it were, butthat’s part also of the way American leaders are the vision of America’s exceptional place in the world because when you look at the United States it washardly a democracy. First, you had slavery obviously, but most people did havethe vote. It’s about 5% of the population which are the vote and they were allwhites who owned property and all male. So the idea there was a democracy isreally a far-fetched idea. It’s kind of, you know, the building of founding,foundational myth about democracy because there was no democracy at the timeeven though that you talk about, you know, the equality of people, etc, etc. Butthere was no such thing even in terms of the French eyes. So, and this is, allcountries do the same thing about the Haitians when they created Haiti. You knowwhat ______ the other vision of Haiti was exceptional, the most radicalrevolution of all places, which it was actually at that time, but they weredespots all of them without exception. When they took power they ran the showlike messianic leaders and you can you know Toussaint was declared governor forlife in his own Constitution, Dessalines became the first leader of Haiti afterindependence in 1804 and in the very first speech he gives he says you peopleyou’d better watch out and you should never disobey me. He says that. And that’sthe way they ran the show and they became emperors, so you have that kind of vision that we are doing something completely new, very different but thestructures of inequality, the structures of domination are all there. And thoseare founding myths and this is very difficult. I don’t want American or Haitianto look at it and say well they were, those people were really despots.

JP: So you’re saying the two almost competing

RF: They’re kind of two competing for, obviously the United States is much more powerful. So therefore the exception is of the United States does matternot just what United States but for the rest of the world because theexceptional idea of the United States is that this is the city on the hill andthat it’s exporting democracy all over and that if you don’t follow our way,well, it’s going to be our way or else. Especially if you’re in the Caribbean.Whereas Haiti could say whatever they wanted, but it had no impact because wedidn’t have the power. And essentially Haiti relinquishes any revolutionaryvision the very day that it becomes independent because they are fearful that ifthey spread the revolution elsewhere, I mean in terms of slaves getting theirfreedom, that they will be destroyed and they would have been destroyed by theUnited States or by the French or by the British or a combination of all ofthem. So there is a difference between exceptionalism that is for nationalconsumption, but has no real power and one that is for not only nationalconsumption, but that is for also international consumption backed by the powerof the most powerful nations. So those are different kinds of exceptionalism,but the myths are very similar.

DM: One is much more rhetorical, and one is rhetorical with a lot of back, of force of ammunition.

RF: Of force of power. Absolutely. And that’s very clear.

DM: You know, it’s been a while since I read C.L.R. James’s, The Black Jacobins. Does he talk at all about Jefferson in Haiti?

RF: He doesn’t talk much about it because he looks obviously the title of the book is The Black Jacobins. So it’s much more vision of the Haitianrevolutionaries as espousing, if you wish, the bourgeois democratic revolutionof 1789 than the American Revolution. So it’s a continuity between the Jacobinsand the French Jacobins and the so-called Black Jacobin. And Toussaint wasa francophile. So, it was very clear and he used to send letters to the Frenchleaders, especially to Napoleon saying ______ [French quote], âto the firstwhite to the first black. That’s the way he saw himself. And he was aFrancophile and he was in some ways very radical in other ways very conservativeand I think the idea of France and the French Revolution, even when Napoleonbecame the main leader in France, led him to trust the French. And he was, youknow, trapped in Haiti and he was captured and sent to France and he died inFrance and the letters that he writes, a letter saying “What are you doingto me? I’m a French general.” And “what about my family? I can’t seethem. How can you treat the French general, someone who’s been andNapoleon doesn’t even bother to answer it.

DM: So there is French and there is French? Who’s French?

RF: Yeah that and this is this one of the things with after, Toussaint, once he is sent into exile in jail in France, Dessalines decides we are not going tohave anything to do with the French, we’re going to kill them. And he says thisvery clearly, you know, and he takes the French flag and the white part of theFrench flag he destroys. And he puts the red and the blue which is the Haitianflag. So that is also very Dessalines is not a Francophile. I mean, hehates the French. He doesn’t trust them, he thinks they are slave owners andthat they are killing slaves. There is no place for friends and he doesn’t wantthem and the first constitution says no single inch of the Haitian territory canbe owned by whites and he really means the French.

DM: It’s very interesting when you start looking at people who are apostles of freedom, who are freedom fighters, who give their lives for the cause of freedomand for many people that means some kind of unqualified investment in thecountries they seek to liberate, right? That, this is an imperfect analogy, butas you were just talking about, Toussaint as Francophile, I was thinking aboutDouglass because my niece and nephew went to the museum and came back with lotsof questions about Douglass and you know Douglass is one of the leadingabolitionists. He’s clearly the premier speaker on the abolition circuitthroughout the 19th century. And yeah, he was really quite identified withinterests that many people would consider quite conservative and at the end ofhis life, is very much somebody who was a supplicant on the day ofLincoln’s second election or inauguration. He [a cough covers the audio] itknown that wouldn’t have been, I need to verify this, in any case, he has becomesomething of a supplicant: âYou don’t you know who I am? I am FrederickDouglass’s And everybody’s saying well, you may think that means somethingbut it doesn’t mean anything to us. So he becomes very much a person who wastrying to claim his own black exceptionalism before people who, I mean even ifLincoln is going to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, we know all thecomplications of that. That it’s black people who really fought for and restedtheir own freedom, that Lincoln was not their great emancipator, but it isDouglas who keeps thinking that he can somehow mediate between black people andthose in power and that those in power could actually find him a more palatableblack person to deal with.

RF: The thing with Toussaint is that, as you know, Toussaint was a slave then he became a slave owner and then he became someone who fought against slavery andhe was not one of the first ones. But then he became the leader because he wastruly a military genius. But he during the, there were several powers inHaiti: the Spaniards, the British, the French, and he was in the mid-17â¦1790s, he was with the Spaniards. But the French Assembly declared that slaverywas abolished and there was a French commissioner who was a Jacobin and anabolitionist and he introduced a proclamation in Haiti in 1794, I think, or1793, I would need to check on that but saying that the slaves were freed in thenorth of the country in particular there was some ambiguity. So once he heardthat, he shifted and he trusted the French because he thought that the Jacobin,and this is again to go back to James’ book, that is why he had the convictionâwell the French are different, maybe because they are abolishingslavery. “The Jacobins are different people.” They are not like, youknow, the Spaniards they are doing it and they are proclaiming it, this a realbreak with the past. So there is that kind of affinity with the Jacobin but Toussaint was a conservative guy. And it was also a conservatism that wasbrought about by the Haitian economy. The Haitian economy functioned on slaveryand on sugar. So, once you abolish slavery, you had a real problem because howare you going to get the economy going when it’s completely dependent on sugar?So, what all the Haitian leaders, not just Toussaint, up until the 1820s, theyimpose really a nasty what is called a Code _____ and it’s essentially forcedlabor on the plantations. It’s not slavery, but it is forced labor and it’sreally very a tough thing, even kids are involved. So, the idea was that theonly way that Haiti could survive is by having flourishing plantations. The onlyway that the plantation economy at that particular time could be beneficial wasif you had forced labor, not necessary slavery, but forced labor. And there iseven some in some writings of Toussaint saying well, we may even import someslaves from Africa to do the dirty work. So, it was a complicated period after1804, slavery is abolished but the Code _____, Toussaint wants, Petion wants it,but I mean all of the successive leaders, Christophe wants it, because that’sthe only way you can survive. The problem though is that the slaves would havenone of it. I mean, they fought for slavery and they were essentially people, aswe say in Haiti, they were involved in marronage continuously. The state couldsay something that we would evade and we would get a little plot of land andthat would be that so they could never impose the Code ____ effectively.And the other problem was that there was, the United States was not in thebusiness of doing business with Haiti, which was the real problem and the Frenchwere not in that business either. So, once Haiti gets its independence, it iskind of cordoned off as kind of a rogue state.

[/accordion]

JP: And so what’s “marronage?”

RF: Marronage is essentially the idea that slaves would escape slavery and do their own thing. But it’s a much more complicated issue. But in Haiti and inJamaica marronage became a significant phenomenon, whereby slaves would escapeand create their communities outside of the plantations and there was somecompromise between the leaders of the maroons and the slave owners. So, it’s a complicated…

JP: And it enters into the language as a term of resisting?

RF: It’s kind of resisting by escaping, moving around the issues, you know, the government tells you to do something, you say yes, but you do the opposite.

DM: It’s associated with the former fugitivity. You see, unlike escape say for blacks escaping from slavery on various plantations on the US mainland, becausewhen you escaped from slavery under those conditions, you are escaping thatplantation, you were removing yourself from that environment from that land. Butmaroons are living in contiguous physical relationship to the country. Justseparate and apart. In a different social universe.

RF: Yes, in a different community. And there were tensions at the beginning of the Haitian Revolution between maroons and slaves because they were notnecessarily on the same side. They have different interests and then you havethe conflict also between the slaves who had just arrived, which were called inHaiti, b____. And the slaves who had been in Haiti for a long time who were bornin Haiti. The significant number of the slaves who are born in Haiti were theleaders of you see of the revolution and that created a stratification betweenthe local indigenous, if you wish, population and those who have just arrived.And the term b____ in Creole means that you’re kind of inferior. So, thatremains as something, you know, that you’re not quite educated etc., etc. So,but there was a tension and then you have obviously in Haiti you at the racialtension between the mulattoes and the blacks and that was a real, I mean, therewere civil wars between the different camps here.

DM: So if you were, Robert, to talk to any general community of readers and generally educated people about Jefferson’s relationship to Haiti, what would itbe? What would be the philosophical takeaways? What would be the politicaltakeaways when we think about Jefferson and Haiti?

RF: Well, he clearly, his sympathies were not with the slaves and with the slaves who had revolted. Once they revolted on the same geopolitical andeconomic interest, you could reach a compromise which they, which he did. Inspite of his racist convictions. But once Haiti became independent, that was adifferent matter because one of the things that Jefferson was really concernedabout was the spread of the ideas of the Haitian Revolution and this is a veryimportant phenomenon. I mean this is, you can sense it, you read it, it’s there.There is a very famous Haitian anthropologist by the name of Rolph-Trouillot whosaid that Haiti was not thinkable. That is wrong. That is simply wrong Haiti wasso thinkable. That’s why they were so terrified about Haiti. And even before theRevolution, the French were thinking about the possibility of a slaverevolution. Obviously it was there and when you read this stuff that they writeabout Haiti, it’s not that it was not thinkable, it was too thinkable. They wereterrified and once Haiti becomes independent, then you want, you don’t want totalk about it. So if you wanted silence. But it’s the silence [30:00] thatexists because you are so terrified about the existence of the very phenomenonthat you are denying.

DM: And clearly when you read other aspects of Jefferson’s writings, I mean that is a completely imaginable claim in proposition because he is saying pretty muchif there is the emancipation of slaves in the US, then these people who wereformerly enslaved must be sent off shore. You need to get these people out ofhere. And you need to get them out of here because the tensions that have arisenand been allowed to flourish for generations will create, he talks about theseâboisterous passions, so he has even imagined this himself.

RF: But there’s a debate about the so-called the Toussaint clues. This is about Toussaint _____ and that’s under Adams and it’s called the ToussaintClause because it was to impose an economic embargo on France except essentiallyon Haiti which was in the hands Toussaint at that point. And the debate is veryclear. I mean even people who are abolitionists, they are terrified of Haiti. Imean I just read some of the debate, there is a fellow Albert Gallatin who wasSwiss-born statesman from the United States who was a Congressman and astatesman and abolitionist and he goes on and on about Haiti and how terrifyingit would be if they got their independence because they would spread diseaseelsewhere and he’s an abolitionist. So, this is very present in their mind,but there is the geopolitical interests of the United States. They want theFrench armies to be weakened. And when Napoleon comes to power it’s even more ofa problem than the Haiti problem or the black slavery revolution because theysee Napoleon as using Haiti, crushing the revolution in Haiti, and going toLouisiana and controlling the western part of what is now the United States. Andone of the ironies of the whole thing is that itâs precisely becauseNapoleon’s armies were defeated in Haiti that Napoleon came to the negotiatingtable with Jefferson for the Louisiana Purchase. So, in a weird way, the ironythat black slaves revolting, defeating Napoleon allow the negotiations and allowJefferson to accomplish what some people think is one of the biggest things ofhis presidency, the expansion of the United States, doubling essentially theterritory of the United States. That to a large degree, not all of it, but to alarge degree is a consequence of Napoleon’s defeat in Haiti. Because Napoleonsent 50,000 people and he thought “We’re just going to stop there. Wecrushed the, you know, the slaves then we send them to the western parts.”_____, exactly. That was, Jefferson knows that. Not only Jefferson but all ofthe statesmen in the United States. And this is why they are plotting so thatyou can weaken the French while you say at the same time, âWe are going tostarve Toussaint, we’re going to starve, what they were doing, theywere very duplicitous.

JP: So, at that time, the US was plotting to.

RF: Covertly, not the government, but merchants, bankers, it was kind of piratery. They were sending weapons, they were sending, exchanging goods, theydidn’t want the French to win. It would it would be a problem for them. Theywere terrified of Napoleon’s imperialism in what is now the United States, the western part of the United States.

DM: Well you see this is what I meant a few minutes ago. When I asked you know whether Jefferson is ultimately expedient where these calculations I mean weknow these calculations are entirely for his own benefit. And the benefit ofâ¦

RF: Yeah, there’s a very complex game there. But but on the other hand, I think, you know, if he was not worried above all about the model of Haiti afterindependence, he could have had a much more relaxed policy. Not to say evenrecognized but tolerated. Now, he doesn’t want, he wants an embargo. And that’s immediately after in spite of the Haitians begging ultimately, it’s not beggingbut saying we are not going to send anything on Jamaica or the other islands,don’t worry about it. This is just Haiti. Let’s talk. Let’s re-establish good…No, he doesn’t answer that. And Haiti recognized the idea only in 1862,I think.

DM: So, in what ways are we really dealing with the reverberations of that history?

RF: Well, I think the relation between the United States and Haiti is still very much part of that past. The existing relations, not only that but then UnitedStates occupies Haiti too, you know, from 1915 to 1934. And then you know itoccupies Haiti again, you know, on a shorter basis but in the 90s and in 2004, which is the bicentennial of the Haitian Revolution. Then the UN replaces them.So you have a story that has a certain amount of continuity because clearly theoccupation from the nineteen teens to 1934 is full of racism. I mean, thelanguage is absolutely horrible. I mean the way they look at Haitians. And it’spart of that past that Haitians are savages essentially they can’t run theirshow. We are going to run it for them and we are going to do it whether theylike it or not. And if we have to occupy the country weâll do so and theydid. And if we have to suppress the areas we will and they did. So, that is thestory. And even in 2004 you have those kind of that legacy of looking atHaitians as weird, maybe not quite savages but almost savages, practicing voodooand being incomprehensible and we don’t know how to deal with them, but weshould impose something on them. I mean there were reports in 2004 about someChristian leaders in the United States saying that the problem of Haiti wasvoodoo and that they are savages. That’s basically what they said and we can’tdeal with them until voodoo has disappeared. Voodoo is part of the Haitianculture, you’re not going to do anything but really nurture it if you attack it.So you have that then the vision of Haitians are different. Trump! I meanrecently. What does he say?

RF: Yeah, going to the United States because that’s where the money is. Or go to Canada. So you have that… but the whole story really starts with the HaitianRevolution and that the tension exists but on the other hand you have many evenwhites in the United States at the time of the Revolution who admired Toussaintand who admired what slaves could do and it was proof in their view that slaveryin the United States should be abolished which also means that it was a greatdanger to people like Jefferson. Because if whites could, and this is one of thethings, Jefferson was not [40:00] just like all the whites. That’s not true. Youknow, your abolitionists, there were people even when they had slaves, when they died they freed them. Jefferson never did that. And Jefferson would, I just readsomething about Jefferson saying when he was young that it was for the elderstatesmen to decide the issue of slavery when he becomes a statesmen he saidit’s a new generation that should deal with slavery. So there’s equivocation atall times. It’s complex. Ultimately I think he knew that it was wrong, but hecould notâ¦

DM: He couldn’t disentangle himself from it. And he couldn’t disentangle himself from it for a variety of reasons including those deeply personal. Imean, there’s a good bit of self-interest here in the fact slaves were sold totake care of his debts.

RF: Yep absolutely. I mean slaves were capital. And it was a huge amount in the American economy. So the idea that slavery was just racism is also wrong.There’s a lot of economic interest behind slavery. Slavery was capital.

DM: Yeah, and it’s so it actually that history is now or historiography is coming to not so much settle in this place but to basically in the last eight toten years in particular to focus on capitalism and slavery. It’s not that it hadnot been a topic broached before because it had but in recent years with ______and a whole range of other recent books talking about slavery and capitalism.It’s just an unavoidable conversation.

RF: The two arms join at birth. And liberalism is also born with slavery because you know in a fundamental way liberalism was very extreme exclusionary. The ideaof liberalism embrace, that’s nonsense. Liberalism was really part of thishistory of slavery too.

DM: And it remains.

RF: Yes, and the people from the enlightenment which supposedly were so visionary, they couldn’t deal with slavery. Either they were silent on it orthey would be very much like Jefferson; equivocate. I mean Locke was againstslavery, but he was a member of the I think one of the major trading companiesin slavery. Hegel, you know he can’t deal with slavery either. Slavery isbad, but we have to keep it. The Africans are not inferior but yes, they areinferior. There is a complete confusion whether it’s intentional, whether it’srelated to economic interest, but it’s there that the Enlightenment has a deepproblem when it addresses slavery. It doesn’t resolve it. It pushes it,postponed the day of reckoning, a lot of gymnastics around the problem and manyof the great philosophers are fundamentally racist.

DM: That is among the most indisputable points that could be raised and even people I mean in the course of this conversation, we’ve been talking aboutabolitionism and who is an abolitionist and where abolitionists come down,really. It’s clear where they come down on slavery but where they come down onslavery is logically inconsistent with where they come down on race. Where theycome down on slavery is it’s a moral wrong. We need to get rid of it. TheMassachusetts Anti-slavery Society is among the most prominent of anti-slaverysocieties and why should we get rid of it? All kinds of apparatus, all kinds ofarguments about slavery is wrong it completely disrespects the fundamental unitof humanity that being the family, separating mothers from their children,fathers from their children, fathers i.e. slaveholders selling their childrenfor their own gains that all of this is morally reprehensible. But that did notlead them to the next logical step that these people who are being held captiveare like us, they are humans just like us. Abolitionists didnât believethat for a moment. [45:00] No, we can get rid of slavery, but people whom wehave held captive are not like us, they are not equal to us, and we are not compelled to think of them as being equal to us.

JP: Which is why I think it’s truncation example that if you give is very instructive in the sense of abolitionists actually being advocates for censuringand sort of closing off trade with Haiti for that exact reason. So what are a few..

RF: They are essentially afraid of the consequences of their beliefs because they can’t go to the logical conclusion. And I think it’s deeply related to thekind of visceral racism that existed and economic interests. The two are deeplyconnected. One reinforces the other. Because if you’re going to put people intoslavery, you need to dehumanize them to such an extent that you come to beconvinced that they are inferior, that they are not quite human beings. So thenyou can put them in the position where you can exploit their labor and you feel,you don’t feel bad about it. And clearly many of those people didn’t feel badabout it because the punishments that were given to slaves were absolutelyhorrific. I mean, it’s mind-boggling to think about what went on during slavery.As examples, cutting hands, cutting legs, you know, there are even stories ofputting people in holes and putting honey on their heads and letting them beeaten by ants. And there were even worse stories about where you put dynamite ina slave etc. So it’s a horrible story and the only way you can do that is Ithink by believing that they are not full human beings that theyâreactually not human beings. And anyone who defied that stereotype became aproblem and how do you deal with people? How do you deal with someone likeToussaint? He was a genius and it’s a complicated thing, but then there weresome Jacobins who were prepared to deal as equal and this is one of the reasonsthat Toussaint abandons the Spanish because ___ is more than an abolitionist.He’s convinced that there is ultimately maybe equality between the two buthow do you generate the end of slavery? It’s a complicated economic interest,you know, you have to deal with franchise. So it’s problematic but not allabolitionists are the same either.

JP: In thinking about the Haitian Revolution as a critique and counter to some American ideals about freedom or independence, but I wonder if you can talk moreabout to what extent against challenge about the added component of, you know,the equation of slavery and race in the nominally black country. I wonder if youcould speak more about kind of competing dynamics between American freedom andthis revolutionary ideals and what was going on in Haiti at the time as apotential critique or alternative to America?

RF: Yeah, well the Haitian Revolution probably is the logical conclusion of a conjuncture of events. First, you have the French Revolution which opens inSaint Domingue the possibility of thinking about abolishing slavery. But youcan’t think about abolishing slavery if you don’t have slaves in the process ofrevolting. And that is quite important because I don’t think you needed to tellthe slaves that there was the French Revolution and that slavery had to beabolished. I think they knew that. But the French opens up, you know, a windowbecause there is a moment where the French say that slavery should be abandonedand there’s a proclamation in 1794 that is the end of slavery. So it becomeslegitimate and the Haitians seize it, the slaves seize that opportunity toviolently overthrow slavery. But it’s not a gift of friends of 1789. It’ssomething that had to be conquered by the slaves themselves, but on the otherhand, there’s a conjuncture that allows for that movement to crystallize becauseif it had not happened, if 1789 that not happened, the Rebellion initiativewould have been completely crushed. And its because the French gave that openingthat the slaves could seize it and by the time they want to reestablish slaveryunder Napoleon, it’s too late. The slaves are not going [50:00] to put up withit. So in some ways the French Revolution is the ultimate bourgeois liberalrevolution. The American Revolution is there’s really the first bourgeoisconquest of creation of a nation out of imperialism, the British imperialism.But it’s not a radical break in terms of establishing equality. That Revolutionis not about really equality, it’s about property. And property means alsoslavery. The French Revolution is a little bit more radical. And the Haitianrevolution is more radical in the sense that race is part that race shouldnot be part of exclusions. So you have but all of those revolutions havetheir limits. I mean the Haitian Revolution led to old forms of authoritarianleadership. You know Haitians like the Americans they like to think, âWellwe created that republic where everyone was equal.â That is nonsensical.It’s really a myth. There is no equality in Haiti, there’s no equality in theUnited States, and clearly there is no equality in France either. It’s reallythe kind of stuff that you invent in some ways to build a nation. You createsomething that becomes a very powerful myth. But it is not reality, but itdoesn’t matter that it’s not reality because even the people who are within thatcommunity believe in the myth, even if they are not equal, but they believe init. I mean, I’m always puzzled when I said “How can you say that, you know,you had equality? Five percent of the people who voted and then you had slavery,women were excluded, a lot of white men were excluded, the vast majority of thepopulation was excluded from power. How can you talk about democracy? Makes nosense. Same thing in France, Napoleon is restored and it’s over. In Haiti, youhave that revolution but the former slaves, they are forced into course labor.They have to escape again that thing. And the leaders of messianic authoritarianfigures. There is no equality there. But those are very powerful things that Ithink people transmit from one generation to the other in terms of educationalsystems, etc, etc. And then you come to believe in it. And if you say no thenpeople look at you as if you must be crazy. But the reality is that those mythsare just that. They are myths. Important to create a nation but nonetheless theidea that those revolutions generated what you learn in the books is nonsensical.

JP: Yeah. I wonder it’s suggested that Jefferson in really important ways this project is about Jefferson and his broader implications so Iwonder if you could briefly reflect about this particular history?

RF: Well, it’s, I have an enigma actually. I arrived here in 1981 and I went to a lecture Jefferson and there was, I forget his name, he was at the time thebiographer of Jefferson. What’s his name?

DM: Dumas Malone?

RF: Exactly, and I’m listening to him and I’m just an assistant professor, but he was saying all kinds of things that wouldn’t even add up, some of themtrue. But then someone asked him the question would Jefferson have a relationwith a slave? He said no because he was a man of honor. So, I was so puzzled. Iwasn’t even angry because to me that made no sense. I mean coming from Haiti,Iâm a descendent of precisely that very kind of union between you know,slave owners and slaves. So, how can you say that? I literally said, âhowcan you say that that didn’t happen?â Slaves were objects. So if the masterwanted that object for his sexual satisfaction that was that! It was not a moralquestion even for because it was an object. And he looked at me really likethis man is crazy. And he didn’t answer it. They said well Jefferson was anhonorable man so that told me that it was a very bizarre story and theneventually we realized that through scientific things obviously what wasobvious to me started to become obvious to many people.

JP: But that also tells you something about the States. So, was that your first experience in the States or?

RF: No, in that setting about Jefferson and because I never really thought about the matter because coming from Haiti, we knew that slaves had relations,sexual relations with the slave owners. I mean, this was taken, it was not evenan object of discussion. It was part of the reality of slavery. So, to tell methat didn’t happen made no sense. I could not, and I think it’s part of themythical vision that people came to accept, even people who studied and theydenied it. Even when you see it black and white, you’re going to deny it. Andfor a long time they denied it and even people with the DNA, some people stilldeny it.

DM: Oh you know, I was at uh, it wasn’t Monticello but the building down the hill. I’m not going to remember the exact name of that building but it’s where alot of the educational programming comes out of pertaining to Monticello. And soit was at that that place where the avuncular Dr. Foster first revealed whatwere ultimately modest conclusions in the scientific sense and I sat in theroom. It was a Sunday afternoon. Maybe I’d say 40-50 people were there, half ofthem journalists and the Dr. Foster said if the man alleged to beJefferson’s father was his father, then science can verify that Jeffersonfathered at least one of Sally Hemings’s children. So it’s a very modestproposition. He is letting the scientific data, he’s letting the DNA lead himwhere he needs to go. He isn’t even claiming that he’s the father of all the children. I found it utterly really fascinating that there were people in thatroom who were really prepared to suggest “Well, maybe the man who was saidto be Jefferson’s father wasn’t his father. Maybe Jefferson’s mother was overhere cavorting and carrying on.” That it was so utterly unthinkable thatthe honorable Thomas Jefferson could have fathered children with a slave womandespite what, as you say, despite what we know this is completely ordinary inthe period in which Jefferson lived. But people were better prepared to suggestor to speculate that perhaps Jefferson’s father was not his father in order to deny that he could have fathered children with Sally Hemings and the wholequestion of honor, and the whole question of basically when you talk about thethe mythologization of democracy, the mythologization of Jefferson is asthis person who because he is associated with the Enlightenment, because he isassociated with the egalitarianism, because he is associated with the idea of independence and democracy, that everything else that follows from that,including in his personal life, is logically consistent with all of that and itis not. It is absolutely not. And that that is ideological. That has to do,because if you can imagine that Thomas Jefferson not only had sexual relationswith Sally Hemings, that is not hard to imagine, because Jefferson was aslaveholder and she was his property. So if you have trouble imagining thatthough let’s say Jefferson may have had sexual relationships with her, but hecould not have been emotionally connected to her, then you can reinforce thisage old fiction or reinforce this age old idea that these people who were beingheld captive are less than human because if they are less than human than theyare outside the domain of all those things that make us human including the capacity to love. And so this is the thing that is so unimaginable that Jefferson could actually love a person who was his property because ifJefferson could love a person who was his property, then Jefferson could regardher as something other than a sexual object, that she could be something elsefor him and it is that something else that people find unimaginable and theyfind it unimaginable whether they are die hard Jeffersonians or whether they aredie hard supporters of Sally Hemings. It’s something on both sides of thisideological divide that makes it unthinkable, alright? Unimaginable thatanything could have obtained between a slaveholder and his property. Anythingthat could have could have obtained that would even get us close to thinkingabout an emotional connection that it could only be physical even if we imaginethat he did this thing, physical, as an honorable man. Well if he could do that, that’s all he was doing. That is all he was doing. He could not have cared forher. It was Garry Wills in the great debate after the DNA findings who saidwell, okay. So let’s imagine that Jefferson did sleep with her. Let us imaginethat he had sex with her with some frequency, but he could not love her. He didnot love her. I think so, how do you know that Garry Wills? We don’t know whatobtained between these two people that much of what people say about thatrelationship is highly speculative.

RF: No, we can’t know.

DM: We really simply don’t know and so if we consider that we can’t know, then why are people so invested in reproducing a narrative that says there could nothave been anything that obtained between these two people that would lead us tothe conclusion that to him, she was human and to her, he was human. Even thoughhe was her slave owner. So these complications about emotional connections Ifind so so deeply fascinating that no side can imagine that we can talk about,which may kind of bring ourâ¦ return us through the initial the launch ofthe conversation. that this contemporary exhibition wants to invoke theterminology of rape, right? Because it wants to invoke the terminology of rapeas some means of vindicating Sally Hemings. That Sally Hemings was simply anobject, Sally Hemings was simply a victim, that it is a refusal that SallyHemings could have been engaged in that which many women were engaged in in theinstitution of slavery. If we only want to talk about it as being expedient, ifI have a relationship of whatever kind with the person who owns me, then I mayhave some leverage here.

RF: Yeah, there is agency.

DM: Yeah, there is leverage, there is agency, and we clearly have precedents for this. The same people who teach say for example, The Incidents in the Life of aSlave Girl where Harriet Jacobs whose genealogy and biography has beendocumented has been traced to South Carolina that when she is saying, âIconsider it the better part of freedom and Independence to be able to choose theperson with whom I will enter into a sexual relationship.â So, rather thansubmit to the unwanted advances of the person who owns her, she does submit toanother white man. Why does she submit to another white man? Because she saysthis is her choice. This is her choice. And I think Robert, Walter Johnsonrather has given us all kinds of reasons to complicate the idea of the agency ofenslaved people. But even given that, I think however tentative we have to beable to suggest that even under conditions of enslavement, there may not havebeen agency in the term that the law recognizes agency, right? But there is inthe minds of some of these people, agency nonetheless. So these are as you sayvery very complicated relationships very complicated entanglements and I don’tthink we do ourselves any good to remain locked in these ideological positionsthat make the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemingsso neat and bifurcated as owner to property, as slaveholder to slave, asdominator to victim, that there is a lot more nuance.

RF: There are negotiations going on.

DM: There are negotiations and we have to believe, when I talk to my students all the time, “Well, he had all the power.” I go “inwhat relationship have you ever known, can you think of any relationship inwhich there are not power asymmetries?” I submit to you that if you are theparent of a newborn baby and at three o’clock in the morning that baby won’tstop screaming and you have to get up out of your bed and walk the floor withthat baby, that baby has in these moments some power over you, your movements, your choices, your sleep. So if we then suggest that power asymmetries in thatrelationship render it an impossibility, then we’re saying no relationships arepossible even in the most loving relationships there are power asymmetries. Andso I think that it again it is this investment in ideology, it is investment in particular positions about race, on all sides of the divide where as long as wecan see Jefferson as ipso facto a person who dominated and raped Sally Hemings,then there is no other discussion we need to have, right? That he then allows usto condemn this god-awful institution. We can condemn this god-awful institutionwhile at the same time we can leave open the possibility because again, I wantto constantly say we don’t know what passed between these people. We simplydon’t know. We don’t know everything is speculation. This is not truth. Thiscannot be verified. There is no archive at least not now. Nothing that we haveextant to tell us what happened between these people. Nothing.

RF: the difference though, it must have been a peculiar form of love if it did exist. Because slavery is not just relation of asymmetrical parts. It’s reallyan absolute relation of differences of power.

DM: Theoretically.

RF: So, the interesting question is if in spite of that, you can have love even if it’s complicated by the existence of slavery. Then that to some extent givesus a lot of hope because slavery is such an awful institution and that you couldtranscend it in very imperfect ways, but you could transcend it and you couldstop loving someone, that indicates the artificiality to some extent of theinstitution itself because there is a bond of humanity that transcends the mostawful institution. So, but, on the other hand that bond slavery can alsodeform that. When you see people, the separation from their families, white master as a kid and you can’t stay on the plantation he has to be sent somewhereelse, and sometimes sent anywhere and other times sent with some money and someprotection wherever he goes. So, so, it’s a complicated thing but it’s like anylove story.

DM: Like any love story, it’s complicated. That is absolutely the case. And yes, slavery deformed all relationships. By definition it deformed them. So, to me,I’m pretty pretty clear on this. I am also not inclined necessarily to want totalk about say even a love relationship in the terms that we think about lovetoday because love is something that lives in history. Our ideas about love livein history. Romantic love is a recent construct. Romantic love is in thehistorical spectrum rather new and so I’m not talking about ideas of romanticlove. I’m thinking of something that is just much more complex than simply thisis the person who owns me and therefore my only emotional response to thisperson is hate, alright? My only response [1:10:00] to this person is rejection,right? And then that works conversely, alright? This is my property and thus myonly relationship to this property is one of exploitation. This is just someoneI can say, âHere. Come.â You know Faulkner has this wonderful momentin Go Down Moses, I’ve written about it. In Go Down Moses, in the long novellain that collection called, The Bear, the central character, Ike McCaslin, is inthe commissary going over his grandfather’s ledger’s because, this is one thingthat I’ve always found so utterly fascinating about slaveholders, the meticulousrecords they kept. Spent this money for this. So, Ike McCaslin comes across hisgrandfather having indicated that he gave $1,000 to Eunice, his slave, on thebirth of her child. And so Ike is sitting in the commissary with these ledger’s going, “Huh? Must have been love. Must have been some kind of love. Maybesomething akin to love?”, I’m paraphrasing here, but I’m not paraphrasingwhen he gets to the point where he says “just not just some afternoonspittoon, right?â that for my grandfather to have given this woman $1000upon the birth of her child, right? Something had to obtain between these twopeople that is far more complex than merely slave owner and slave and that hedoesn’t know what it is So it’s, everything is in the realm of the interrogativein that scene in the book must have been, could it have been, it’s allspeculative. But he is speculating. Why else? Is the implication. Why else wouldhe have given her $1,000?

JP: I mean with Jefferson, just a brief comment before maybe one final question, is that he was very attentive too to the power of love in the family structuresas a way of controlling labor. So, on the plantation he kept families togetherbecause it made them a more productive worker unit. And so again to presume thatJefferson is in some ways not able to think about love in a productive sensewhat it would mean for workers is an important detail that heâs obviouslycapable of seeing slaves loving one another in terms of family structures and sothat relationship to Hemings adds a potential to be involved in that, in someway, as the sort of master, because you know he liked to say he was the fatherof Monticello or whatever. And so in many ways if heâs this great fatherlyleader of this plantation that is ultimately a big family unit. That is somekind of love.

DM: That is such an important point, James. And especially the notion that Jefferson understood that to keep enslaved people together on the sameplantation actually facilitated and enabled their work as laborers. Again, it’sa kind of deformed it’s a recognition of love being manipulated forself-interested purposes.

RF: Economic interest.

DM: Yeah, self-interest and economic interest, yeah.

JP: But I wonder, oh sorry.

RF: But the idea of the father is obviously something that is pervasive in the creation of all nations. And it’s not just love but it’s also punishment becausethe father does both. And in every country you have so far, they are all malesand they are all father the founding fathers. Not just the United States.It’s everywhere. You have the founding father and it’s both to inspire love butitâs to inspire fear because the father can punish and he has the authorityto punish. So, it is a combination of fear, love, loyalty, the family unit, butobviously the father at the head of the family unit so he can control the familyunit. So, it’s a metaphor that is extremely powerful not just on the plantation,but for the nation itself. And in the United States, the founding fathers;Jefferson, Washington, all of them

DM: Madison.

RF: You know, they are both power, love, loyalty and also hierarchy. So, it’s a complicated metaphor.

DM: Absolutely. And I think that’s a really useful way to think and from which to extrapolate an understanding of relationships in general. That we tend towant to think of the father figure, think of the patriarch, and even for thatmatter, the mother in some one-dimensional way in that these are largely sentimental characterizations, right? But you’re absolutely right It isimpossible to talk about a father, particularly a Founding Father, withouttalking about a person who inspires perhaps more fear than love.

JP: So, we’ve been briefly asking everyone that we’re speaking with if they teach Jefferson and how they might use Jefferson in the classroom?

RF: I don’t really teach Jefferson. On the other hand, I’ve learned a lot about Jefferson simply because I’m at the University of Virginia. You cannotescape Jefferson.

DM: Not even if you wanted to.

RF: Yeah, but Jefferson is fascinating because we’ve been talking about him critically, but he’s also in a fundamental way, a genius. I mean the vision thathe has is a compelling vision. Now what he does with it is a different matter,but the Declaration of Independence is an extraordinary document and it’s something that anyone reading it should really say, “my goodness thosepeople were really onto something fundamental.” An historical rupture witha certain past. So, that is quite important but where I’m critical is that youread the document and then you take the document as if it didn’t exist withthe contradictions of the time. It’s as if you abstract it. You know, it’s abeautiful vision, It’s a beautiful commitment, but it’s one that even in its ownterms has yet to be accomplished after more than 200 years. But it’s animportant document. No one can deny that the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States is a massive event and a progressive event inspite of all the deformities of the event. It’s the same thing with the FrenchRevolution of 1789, same thing with the Haitian Revolution. They are reallyfundamental historical moments but once you say that, you need to look at themcritically because they have not fulfilled the promises that they contain. Andthis is where they have to be taken to task. Not to idealize what has beencreated because it’s not yet there. It gives you a guide on how you may want tocontinue but the historical rupture it would be too easy to say,âWell, that’s it.â We need to engage those texts, those fatherfigures, if you wish, critically without necessarily saying that they were allevil or they were all self-interested, they are complicated people like anyother human being. You look at Toussaint, you know, you look at Jefferson, youlook at Washington, you look at Hamilton, you look at Robespierre. I mean thosewere real historical figures. And clearly there were deformities in the project.The vision may have been compelling but the vision has yet to materialize andthis is one of the things that we need to really study, I think, asintellectuals to look at the contradictions of those important figures and thoseimportant moments in history.

DM: The contradictions and our investments in really wanting to preserve because that I doubt that there are very few people even at theUniversity who would not freely acknowledge that Jefferson is fraught withcontradictions. He is fraught with contradictions as a person, there are deepand explicit contradictions in his work and yet at the same time we keepreturning as it were to the I’m not getting the term I want. We keepreturning to the idea as if you know, you know Freud talked about the repetition compulsion. And in part of what [1:20:00 ] is underneath the repetitioncompulsion is you want to keep replaying something, often in relationships, thathas not worked because you think okay I’ll try it this way this time and thistime I’ll get it right. It’s in part, of course this is a bastardization of acomplex theory, but that is it fundamentally the idea of the repetitioncompulsion. So, I find it interesting that last year the BOV allocated literallymillions of dollars to the University, to the College, in particular, forsomething called the Democracy Project. That’s a lucrative phenomenon fordepartments and scholars. One department received 2.3 million dollars to dowhat? I don’t know. But it’s all under the umbrella of the Democracy Project.So, we are still invested despite what we know to be the flaws, despite what weknow to be the imperfections, what we know to be the deformities. It’s as if wewill come at it and if we know, if we study, if we look at it from this angle,this angle, this angle, and this angle, perhaps we will get it right. And so Ifind a deeply ironic that at this moment in the University’s history, We haveallocated all this money to study democracy. What are your thoughts about that?

RF: Well, I think it’s cyclical. I mean, you know and it depends on the historical moment because in the 60s you had the same thing with the Cold War. Ithink in the late 80s, early 1990s you had an explosion about democracy. It wasgoing to flourish everywhere and anywhere. You just needed to send people whocould write good liberal constitutions and the trick was done. Or you would needto send what I would call missionaries literally and their vision of democracywas fundamental in American democracy and export it and people should like it,love it because there is nothing better than that. And that’s part also of theAmerican myth. The problem is that American democracy is very unique. It’s avery incomplete form of democracy and the fundamental problem for those we seeon the receiving end is that they don’t quite see it the same way because theysee it as an imposition and in many ways as full of hypocrisy. That this is inthe interest of the United States, we’re going to give you a democracy, butif it doesn’t work, if we like someone, that person is going to be the democrat.People who are opposed to the person we support is automatically anti-democraticand you can see that in what happened in Russia after the Cold War. Initially,it was Yeltsin who was going to be the greatest democrat which was a joke. Thenwhen Putin came in power he was supposed to be that great young man and Bushsaying, “I’ve looked at him in his eyes and great guy” and now he’sevil, everything he does is evil and the world is much more complicated thanthat. You can’t impose on a big country like Russia American democracy. That isnot going to work. You can’t do that even in small countries like Haiti.It’s not going to work because there are too many contradictions. If you don’tlike the result of democracy, then it becomes anti-democratic. If someone iselected, was the different vision than that espoused by the United States itcan’t be a democracy. It’s a real problem because it’s a very narrowdefinition of what is democratic. And the election doesn’t make a democracy. Andthere are so many other issues related to the kind of democracy even in theUnited States about the level of inequalities, who votes, who has the capacityto actually be a candidate, and who controls the candidates, the amount of moneythat is spent on any election in the United States now is really so incrediblyhigh that it’s difficult to see that as an exercise in real democracy. Ifyou have money, you can probably be elected. You get the money, you get the theads, you control the message etc. So, it’s a very interesting thing that we aretalking about democracy. I think it comes because in Europe there is acrisis. I think there is a crisis also in the United States. And that leads tosome sort of questioning about whether democracy is sustainable, whatever thatmeans, because it’s not clear what we mean by democracy either but the idea thatelections and whomever is elected is legitimate, those things have come underfire now. And we are trying to recover some sort of commitment to democracybecause it seems that the population has lost it. And Jefferson talked about democracy so what better thing to do at University of Virginia to go back toJefferson and try to invent some new thing to have a notion of democracy? But Ithink it’s a project that is very complicated because it’s a project that isconfined, to a large degree, to Americans and their view about democracy. Thereis no real exchange between different cultures, different parts of the worldabout what democracy means. When you have elections in many Latin Americancountries or African countries, even when they are more or less legitimate.We’re not talking about structures of power circus of inequality etc. we aretalking about a figurehead who becomes president and who is very dependent onthe West, and in many ways in the on the United States and that’s what democracyis in election, but that doesn’t change relations of power. Those things have tobe talked about, the question of economic privilege, economic inequality, andobviously the issues about ethnicity, race, gender that are part of anemancipatory kind of project and that is complicated and I don’t know if they’regoing to get democracy by going back in history and looking again at the keyWestern philosophers and extracting from that something new which I don’t thinkyou can get. Or if you’re going to try to have a much more comprehensive view ofdemocracy by talking to so many different intellectual heritages. I mean whetherit be in China, in Latin America, in Africa, wherever. We seem to think thatdemocracy is something that only we have in the United States and we can teachit and that’s very problematic.

DM: We can teach it and we can export it despite its own failings here in the United States. And one of the other things I find just really deliciouslysuggestive is that at the same time that we are mounting this huge overview orexploration of democracy and allowing people to compete for lucrative sums ofmoney in order to pursue these explorations, we are at the same time investingin understanding slavery and understanding our slave past. So, as near as I cantell, these questions of inequality and race and ethnicity don’t seem to befront and center of this whole new democracy project. But race is taken up onthe slavery side of things. So, we have these two pillars certainly central tothe former administration of President Sullivan in bridging into the incomingadministration with Ryan. Ryan was not the architect of this Democracy Project.But supposedly, it is his administration that is going to be in large parthelping to oversee or implemented it. So, democracy, it well, it’s a new, aproject very much in its infancy.

RF: Yeah, it may also be I think it it’s also the product, inevitable product of what happened last August that the University was really in the middle of a verynasty historical moment in terms of race, in terms of neo-nazis, in terms of therecognition that slavery was really a significant event in the creation ofAmerican democracy. So, those things came all together and Charlottesvillebecame kind of the center of that maelstrom, if you wish, and I think that ledthe University to start thinking [1:30:00] about race again, start thinkingabout slavery, start thinking about democracy. When you have a bunch ofneo-nazis walking on the Lawn and to some extent claiming that the Lawn istheirs and that is connected to the heritage of this University, then thatcreates a problem for the University and the problem has to be dealt with in thebeginning of the 21st century, which supposedly was no longer existing. I meanwe’re supposed to be in a post-racial society and democracy inside of the UnitedStates had already been resolved. So, those problems come back with a vengeanceand at the core of the University of Virginia which is Jefferson’s creation. So,issues of democracy, slavery, and race come back and the university has to dealwith it. And I think this is why we have so much talk about slavery abouttalking about race, about healing, etc. because it’s the legacy.

DM: But you know, it’s interesting that in terms of the actual chronology, this project on democracy was underway before August 11th and 12th. It was actuallyunderway beforehand. In fact, some of the first projects were funded in the latefall and early new year, which meant the project had been there and applicationshad been made in advance, but that does not alter the fact that August 11thforced a crisis about race into our eyes once again. I mean, much like, I don’tknow why Freud is on my mind this evening, but you know much like the return ofthe repressed, because in a way we really have the idea that we’re in apost-racial society. That is something that people thought that they couldachieve through verbal fiat. We just keep saying it and it will be so. It willbe a reality that we create through the force of repetition. We’re in apost-racial society, we’re in a post-racial society. If we say it enoughwe’ll believe it. You know, I’m not afraid of the dark, I’m not afraid ofthe dark, we’re in a post-racial society, we’re in a post-racial society, andyet last summer, it was clear made really abundantly and violently clear thatnot only are we not in a post-racial society that actually we have trained thevery people who have given the lie or the very people who reinforce the pointthat we are not in a post-racial society. We trained them here.

RF: And you’re right about democracy because I think the issue of democracy came to the fore again after the 1990s because the 1990s were supposed to be themoment when history had ended. As Fukuyama said, where liberal democracy wasgoing was going to be all over the map. And by the end of the 1990s, it’s veryclear that that’s not the case and by the mid 2000s, even in Europe, you havereally the growth of extreme right-wing groups. And you have now in Italy, inAustria, in Hungary, You have essentially neo-fascist governments who have beenelected and I think this generates a crisis of democracy. And there is a fearthat this is spreading all over. That liberalism, as it were, is under assault and that the dreams of the 90s entertained by many liberals those dreamshave ended. The Brexit is a phenomenon that most liberals can’t stomach and itis something that is interesting because I think it’s part of the problems ofglobalization. It’s part of the problem of the spread of neoliberalism, whichcreate, you know, a world market but the world market which is so unequal,whether it be in what used to be called the third world or the industrializedworld, that people are really fed up with that system, but there is noalternative. The alternative that is provided are neo-fascist alternatives. Andthere is very little else and whenever you elect a government, it doesessentially the same thing where it’s the right, the left so why not vote forthe right, the extreme right? Maybe they’ll do something differently? Andit’s the same thing with Brexit. So I think there are losers andI would venture to say the majority of people are losers in the process ofglobalization. But there is an elite which is very cosmopolitan which believesthat it has transcended nationalism, race, class, which is really a myth becausewhen you look at the inequalities that have been created, those things are verymuch part of the global structure, but there is that vision that, you know, weare cosmopolitan and that’s that. And we know that this is not the casebecause when you look at the crisis with immigration, cosmopolitanism ends atthe frontiers.

DM: Or we should say at particular frontiers. It doesn’t end at all the frontiers.

RF: Well in Europe is ending at many frontiers. In the United States, its ending at the Southern frontier and at the same time it’s open to people who havedegrees and money. Because you can buy, you literally can buy your visa into anyof those countries if you’re a millionaire or if you are you’re educated andthey need that particular type of educated individual. So, it’s a veryexclusionary form of cosmopolitanism.

DM: Absolutely. at the very time that Donald Trump is decrying birthright citizenship, Apparently people, women are coming in to give birth in his hotelsand giving birth to US citizens. If you have money you have money you can do it.And his objection to immigration, as you say, seems to be an objection to immigration at the Southern border of the United States.

RF: People who are not educated and who are poor, he doesn’t want them.

DM: But his wives. He never had a wife who wasn’t an immigrant. His mother was an immigrant. So, yeah.

RF: Again the contradictions of

DM: Yeah, yeah. I mean that that just goes, It goes without saying. I suspect James, I don’t know, I think maybe we have exhausted.

JP: We’re getting a little off topic.

DM: Yeah. Yeah, that’s alright.

DM: that just another layer of the discussion, you know Haiti as Unthinkable, but Haiti as very thinkable. Haiti is only unthinkable in some kind of Wishful thinking.

RF: Yeah, it’s always there.

DM: it’s really always there.

RF: You know, it’s like the slaves, you know, they are, that you build walls around them, the architecture of Monticello, They are hidden in order tosee them but they’re always there and they’re essential. It’s not that they areunthinkable, they are too thinkable so you want to try to erase them.

DM: Yeah, all too thinkable. and I mean somehow we didn’t really elaborate, but maybe there will be a space If only just briefly in a future conversation totalk about the kind of discourse of disease in humanity. Independence as adisease. The idea of cannibals and pests because.

JP: And the idea of, Jefferson’s conversation about degeneracy.

DM: Yeah, exactly.

JP: Or the abolitionist rhetoric of slaves being unable to understand morals and guides. The question of the humanity.

RF: Yeah, they are not quite.

JP: Yeah, the question of their ability to fathom certain things.

DM: Yeah and you know in the U.S. Abolitionist Movement, which was really, had many many layers which included instructing children, you know, School manualsand all and so there would be like these kind of primers with question: “what must the Abolitionist do? Think for the slave.” Because the slave obviously can’t think for themselves.

JP: Conversations about schooling and sort of that Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison debate about literacy. Capacities of even slavesadvocating for abolition as in some ways unable to claim equal footing and be onthe same playing field as white abolitionists.

DM: No, they’re not because that is the reason as I’ve discussed with you lots of times to that is why Garrison and Douglass came to a parting of the waysbecause Douglass was too educated For Garrison and Douglass Is this kind of rockstar on the abolitionist circuit in Garrison wants to contain him. You know, ifyou keep speaking like this who is going to ever believe that you were a slave,you need restore some of the plantation to your speech. So when Garrison istelling him to restore some of the plantation to his speech, Garrison isactually in the same logic as mrs. Auld Who was the first person who attemptedto teach Douglass to read and her husband came in to Find her giving himinstructions and he says to her you give her “you give a nigger an inch,he’ll take an ell.” I mean this interdiction of literacy, right? Becausethat’s what Garrison was engaged in. that you, what we need, what AbolitionistMovement needs one thing from you Frederick Douglass and that is for you tomount the podium and at optimal moments remove your shirt, show the scars onyour back, you are just a body. For the abolitionist movement., the abolitionmovement only needs you to tell a story it does not need you to theorize, itdoes not need you to analyze, and you know. And then when Jefferson [Garrison] fled the USand was the rock star in the British Isles, Garrison was completely apoplecticbecause again Douglass was not playing the role that the abolitionist movementhad scripted for him. His role was I was worked in all weathers. I’m barely hadenough food to eat.

RF: of your scars on your body.

DM: But to be actually be able to think about, theorize about, and analyze the institution of slavery, you know, in the domestic and world order, No, that’snot what we want you doing and the real blow was when Douglass started his ownnewspaper. How dare you?

RF: Well it’s the same thing in Haiti when the US occupied Haiti in the 1910s and up to 1940, There is a very famous quote by the Secretary of Statethink it was Jennings, he says, “Oh dear, niggers speaking French!”

DM: Yes! Right!

RF: that that is unthinkable.

DM: You know, it’s like

RF: That can’t be, I mean, they almost look civilized.

DB: You know and it’s like, you know, the Samuel Johnson because you know, you look at these things operating on, you know, the racial plane, the gender plane,you know, when Johnson is saying I mean “the idea of a woman being a writer, Imean it’s easier to imagine a dancing dog”. And you know, I have continued tomaintain people don’t understand why I feel insulted when people say, “OhDeborah, “you’re so articulate” and I go, You know, and people ask “Whyare you insulted about that” and I go, “you know, I am, doggone, I ama University Professor. I mean to say that I’m articulate is just like really unremarkable. If I am, if I cannot be articulate as a University Professor, Ishould hand in my badge, I don’t find this a compliment at all. and I put it inthe logic of you know, “Ah, a black person who can actually get out ofsimple declarative sentence without falling on her face.” Anyway, now, doyou think this is something you’d be interested in doing hanging with us, Robert?